3rd Interloper - Atlas

3I/ATLAS, and the Shattering of Foundations

By now, most of you have probably heard about 3I/ATLAS. It's the third interstellar object we’ve ever tracked, after ‘Oumuamua in 2017 and Borisov in 2019. Discovered on July 1st, 2025, by the ATLAS telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, it’s racing toward us at incredible speed: crossing the solar system’s plane at a sharp angle, passing Mars, sweeping by Venus, and reaching its closest point to the Sun in late October before disappearing behind the solar glare.

This isn’t just another icy visitor. 3I/ATLAS is a time capsule from another star system, somewhere between three and seven billion years old. It’s rich in carbon dioxide and cyanogen, strangely lacking iron, and releasing vast plumes of water as its crust cracks open. James Webb is studying its atmosphere; Gemini South is tracking its glow. But even with all the data, it resists an easy explanation.

For some, it’s an astronomical curiosity. For others, just another headline to scroll past. But for those of us who’ve spent our lives searching for God’s throne somewhere among the stars, there’s a different feeling; a quiet stirring, a prickle on the back of the neck. Not dread exactly, but a sense of presence. Like an uninvited guest arriving at the edge of the solar system, knocking with frozen knuckles.

For me, the discovery of 3I/ATLAS coincided with the brutal breakdown of my life's infrastructure. July 2nd marked the beginning of my mother’s betrayal, perhaps already unfolding before I knew it and the very moment the foundation I had spent my life building, gave way beneath me. Everything I believed to be solid crumbled into dust. And then, far beyond the reach of our small human sorrows, 3I/ATLAS appeared; not as the cause, but as a witness. To the ruin, yes, but also to the possibility of rebuilding something greater than what stood before.

At first, I barely noticed the news. I was too lost in the debris of my own collapse. But then I heard the name, Atlas. The same name my eldest daughter had chosen for herself. The one who stood beside me when everything else fell apart. When I was hollowed out by loss, and at my lowest, she told me that she was glad I was her mother. That my strength made her stronger. My Atlas. The one who held up my sky when I no longer could.

When I finally made the connection, that a comet bearing her name had entered the solar system at the exact moment my world imploded, the synchronicity hit me like a metaphysical gut punch. It felt like a message, though I didn’t know from whom. Maybe not a sign in the old religious sense, but a reflection: something vast and ancient mirroring what was happening inside me. A reminder that even in collapse, there is motion. Even in loss, a path forward.

This isn’t just a rock. It’s a fragment of another world, coming from the same direction as the "Wow!" signal, that mysterious 72-second radio burst from Sagittarius in 1977, that still haunts astronomers. 3I/ATLAS’ path aligns within nine degrees of that signal’s source. Coincidence? Maybe. But it makes you wonder.

Its behavior defies the usual comet playbook: forward jets of light instead of a tail, like headlights illuminating the path ahead rather than a plume trailing behind. It began releasing gas far beyond Jupiter’s orbit, its crust sealing water beneath like it’s guarding secrets. Some scientists speculate it might be debris from a destroyed dwarf planet near a red dwarf star. Others, like Avi Loeb, see it as another reminder of cosmic indifference; proof that we are small, transient, and irrelevant.

And yet, I can’t see it that way. 

While astronomers measure its spectra, astrologers trace its meaning. On October 29th, when 3I/ATLAS reaches perihelion, just beyond Venus’s orbit, they say a “grand water trine” will unfold: Mars in Scorpio, Jupiter retrograde in Cancer, Saturn and Neptune in Pisces. They call it an emotional awakening, a baptism for the soul. By March 2026, when the comet passes Jupiter at 15° Cancer, they see a closing of old cycles, a movement from karma to growth. 

Whether or not you believe in any of that, the timing feels poetic, especially for me. The scientists search for origins; the mystics look for purpose. Maybe both are right in their own ways. Maybe what matters isn’t the object itself, but how we respond to it and how we build meaning from the unknown.

Avi Loeb returns to this theme again and again in his writing: the fear of meaninglessness, the Ecclesiastes despair that “everything is meaningless”, is not something to flee from. It’s a blank canvas that should free us. Death is merely a sandcastle swept away by the tide, leaving us to wonder why we clutched our fragile piles of sand so tightly.

Because in the end, we’re all made of the same stuff; dust from ancient stars, debris from explosions long past, hurtling toward our own close encounters with the light.

Where do I go from here?

Upward.

That electric tingle is still there, but it's not dread anymore. It's excitement. The thrill of rebuilding something new. Not on rigid stone this time, but on water, on something fluid, adaptive, and flowing with the unknown. The comet will emerge from behind the Sun in December, hopefully with its tail still intact, a survivor telling stories about resilience. And we'll all be watching. Some with telescopes, others with their astrological charts, all of us trying to make sense of it in our own way.

Maybe God's throne was never hidden at all. Maybe it's in the space we watch between the stars. In that anticipation crawling across our skin when we look up. In the quiet certainty that meaning isn't something we find; it's something we create. One strange orbit at a time. One forward-facing jet of light showing us the way ahead, instead of a tail showing us where we've been.